#600 - Prospect Says “We’re Doing This In-House” You’ll Say…

0:00One of the most frustrating objections that we can get in sales is... Thanks for your help, Jen, but I actually think we're going to build this in-house. Now, whether that is we're going to build a homegrown version of your product or we're going to take the work your team was going to do, we're going to have our in-house team going to do it. It is maddening to invest all of this time and effort only to get the dreaded, we're going to take a DIY approach. Now, sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. Other times there are. So we're going to talk about how to address that objection, overcome that objection, so that you can help them see that your solution is the right path forward.

0:38And Jen, one of the things you were telling me is that 99 % of sellers address this objection the wrong way. Yes, I certainly used to address it the wrong way, which is we immediately go into defensive mode. And that means I'm telling you all the reasons why DIY is a bad idea. And when I do that, I completely erode the buyer's faith and confidence in me because it makes it look like all I care about is my success, not their success. Now, the good news here is if they are willing to invest resources to build something, it does at least show that it's a problem worth solving. So that's a positive thing.

1:17We just have to find a way to get them to reallocate those resources they'd be putting in-house into my bank account. So you've put together a step-by-step process for how to address and overcome this objection. Why don't we start with what you called step zero? Step zero, I don't think anybody's going to be surprised if you know me, is preparation. So what we don't want to have happen is to get caught with an unexpected DIY objection and then be fishing around trying to come up with reasons in the call why they shouldn't do it. So instead, what I'm going to share are a few simple AI prompts that I use to be able to anticipate and prepare for a DIY objection that might surface in one of my opportunities.

2:03So one of the very first things that I'm looking to understand is the ownership structure of the account. Meaning, are they private? Are they public? Are they VC-backed? Are they PE-owned? And the reason that's really important for me to understand is often what you might find is a VC-backed or private equity-owned company might have some sort of in-house mandate for their portfolio companies, the companies that work under them, that they have to use certain AI technologies. And so it's an easy thing to get caught off guard in the call. It's also a very easy thing to research in advance. So what we're looking at here is the first prompt that I use, which is what is Vista Equity Partners posture towards their port co's adopting AI?

2:49Now, what we're going to see here is right off the bat, Vista is about as aggressively pro AI as any PE firm gets. Their posture is not encourage it, try it if you'd like it, but it's a centralized top-down mandate to push agentic AI across their portcos. So right off the bat, that tells me that DIY, an AI in-house build, is likely to be a potential competitive threat. It doesn't guarantee it, but this would tell me as the sales rep, I need to be prepared if and when it comes up, because that's a really difficult thing for a port co to fight up against their PE or VC companies. The second thing it's teaching me is it's giving me a lot of specifics around what it looks like today, so that I'm not reaching out in the call and holding my hand out and asking them to tell me what's going on.

3:40Instead, it talks about the agentic AI factory, which is a platform that Vista uses. So now it's allowing me to look and sound more prepared because of a simple prompt. And then last but not least, it also talks about some of the partnerships that they have in place for their AI technology. So, for example, it's telling me that they are streamlining access across the port coast to Gemini models. That is good for me to know because it helps me understand what tools they might be using today. So with one simple prompt, I can get a gauge as to how likely it is that an in-house AI build might become a threat to my opportunity.

4:20So that's the first thing that you are looking for before you even get on the call where that objection might come up. But there's other prompts that you are using as a way to make sure that you are prepared for this objection. Exactly. And the second prompt I'm using here is what are the influential voices in the CXO, here I'm using CMO, community saying about vibe coding a CRM. So you would just fill in whatever your version of DIY is there. And the reason I'm doing this is because the more educated I am on the narrative in the industry, the more likely that prospect is to lean into my advice and take me seriously.

4:59And so what you can see here is it comes back with a quote from Scott Brinker, who is a very well-known person within the CMO community. And it's giving me specifics on who is vibe coding what. It's giving me data points that I can use that will help me sound much more educated on the subject. But it also gives me alternative perspective down here. So all this is doing is allowing me to reference other voices within the community that will make my conversation sound so much sounder than, I don't think you should do it because I think it's a bad idea. So it's calling out a few points that I can raise in the conversation.

5:39The next one it looks like you've put together here, Jen, is you go to your AI tool of choice and you ask it about the pros and cons of, in this instance, vibe coding a CRM, which is the build versus buy objection that we're using as the example here. And what this is helping you do is it's helping you, spoiler alert folks, one of the things that you do to overcome this objection is you share both the pros of them doing it in-house and reasons that they might want to, as well as the cons, so that you are presenting a more balanced take in terms of it's not just about let me shove my product down your throat and sell, sell, sell.

6:13It's like, hey, I'm here to be a trusted advisor. I'm here to be a consultant. Let me talk you through the pros and the cons. And this can be a really good way to flesh out your full understanding of why they might or might not want to do something. Exactly. And you'll also see here, it gives you sort of frames for introducing a con. So while a vibe-coded CRM might make sense for a really small business, at an enterprise scale, there's problems with introducing that. And so it allows you to avoid what we tend to do in sales, which is we just think of the cons of doing anything that is in our solution and give you fodder to talk about.

6:49One other thing that I like it's giving me, Jen, it is telling me the conditions under which you would build in-house versus not build in-house. And something that has really helped me in my selling is when I'm trying to convince somebody to do something, I will oftentimes say, look, the reasons that you would not want to do this, and then you share all the conditions, and that makes you more trusted when you share the reasons that they would want to do this. Example, I'm selling specialized billing software to a law firm. I might say, look, it's not worth you doing this if you are not billing insurance companies or large corporations, or if your bill volume is fewer than 1 ,000 bills a month.

7:28Once you get to like the 1 ,500 or so mark of bills that you're sending out to insurance carriers, that's when it usually makes sense to start to introduce some of this specialized billing software. And what I've done here is no longer, I'm now a nonpartisan voice where I'm like, look, there are reasons that you wouldn't want to buy from me. But if you fit these conditions, that's what a good fit is. And that is what gets them to start to trust you more. Yes, 100%. Trust is such an important part here if they're going to listen to your advice. Great. And the next way to trust is to talk about failures?

8:02Not yet. Sorry. then there's one in between, which is to understand what are the tools available out there. And so this is a very simple prompt where you're just prompting it to say, if a company were to vibe code their CRM, what tools or technology would they use to do it? And what are the pros and cons of each? Again, what you're doing here is as you get deeper into that conversation, someone might say, yeah, so our plan is we've got, you know, lovable and we're, our plan is to use lovable to do that if that comes up it is critical for me to understand the pros and cons of what lovable is good and not so good for unique to their situation or we're weighing the pros and cons of repli versus lovable it's again just being well versed so you're not caught off guard and having to say back cut say to them oh let me look into those and come back to you afterwards i think we just lose a little bit of credibility there the last one that i'm doing to prep is the prompt, are there CXOs, so in this instance CMOs, successful sharing successes or failures publicly?

9:07What talking points can I glean from them to show that I have CXO voice? And so here, what I'm looking for are phrases that would make me look and sound like I'm in the know because I am, I'm doing the research. So one that came up here is the CTO coined a term called vibe debt, which is the technical debt that racks up. So when I'm introducing it, instead of going right to, well, what you don't appreciate is all it's going to take in order to make this thing keep running. I might say instead, you know, there was a CTO that was talking about this, this idea of vibe debt. Have you heard of that?

9:43No. What is that? Great. Well, it's this idea that like, it's very, very sexy when you build it. It's the main maintenance part that tends to be really problematic. And now I can start to pull in some of these data points you see on the screen around what others are seeing. So it's not me saying you will fail, you are wrong. I'm using client voice to say, in others who have gone down this path, here's some of the things that have made it harder than they maybe originally anticipated. And now you're having a truly thoughtful and helpful back and forth. The other piece, this reminds me of the one from earlier where you're looking at like the influential voices and what they are saying.

10:17This is similar where this person, Justin, on the screen is an influential voice. And that term, that jargon, vibe debt, when you start to use the same language that influential voices in the space are using, what you're showing your prospect is, I'm someone who gets it. I'm an insider. I am not just a seller who is here to push my product. I'm someone who like, I'm pretty freaking with it. And that shorthand, if they do know what vibe debt is, they just, it fast tracks the conversation and they don't feel like they have to hold your hand through every single piece, you can actually accelerate through talking then about the pros and the cons and why you're a pro, right?

10:54That's what I do next. I tell them all the reasons that I'm a pro once I've done this call prep. All this happens before you get on the call when I suspect I might be working with a prospect who could give me this objection. Now, step one is what I actually do when they break the news to me that, hey, I've really enjoyed getting to know you over the last couple meetings, but I think I'm going to go a different direction and build this in-house. So step one, immediately, what am I doing? Seek to understand. Every behavior and all tools, processes, everything, their behavior is grounded in a set of beliefs and assumptions.

11:32If we do not understand the beliefs and assumptions behind a specific behavior, we will not be able to get that prospect to move off of it because we'll just be fighting their behavior. So resist the urge here to jump in and say, it's a bad idea because. So instead, the very first question I'm going to ask is, interesting, okay, what led you down this decision to build instead of buy? And again, I'm not convincing. I'm just asking an open-ended question to understand. And what I'm listening for here, it goes back to the prep, is I'm listening for, was this pressure from above? There are plenty of executives I've spoken to that said, our CEO is mandating it, or our VC partners are mandating that we do something like this.

12:12I don't even personally believe that we should, but we need to. Even just finding out that insight alone helps me understand, am I sitting on the same side of the table or are we at opposite ends of the table? Is this someone who is a vibe coding junkie who can't wait to vibe code everything? It's going to be a higher hill to climb. So job number one is to understand what led them down the path to build. The second thing I'm doing is I'm looking to understand, like, is this still an idea? Is this something you've already got like a team working on? How far or down the path are you? Again, if it's been two months since we spoke and now they're two months into building, that's just going to make the hill to climb a little bit higher.

12:51If they're early on, they're still running room there. Number three is who else is working on this with you? Now, what I'm really paying attention for here, particularly if it's an AI build, is this a bunch of marketers sitting in a room building it themselves? Have they already looped in IT, finance, everybody else who needs to be involved? If not, that might be an opportunity to leverage some of that prep and say, my gosh, one of the things that I've learned from other companies that have done this is how important it is to involve those other stakeholders early so that the team doesn't invest a ton of time building, only met with a hurdle around data privacy.

13:25Number four, before I get to the negative, again, I just want to lean into the positive. So, like, building is so exciting. It's one of the coolest things that we have at our fingertips today. What are you most optimistic for about the use case of building this instead of buying this? And make it safe for them to get excited and share that stuff with you. You'll hear in the tone of their voice where they light up and where they might have an underappreciated impression of how hard something's going to be. And then I pivot to, now with any build project, there's always some concerns or fears or worries of what might go wrong.

13:58So what are those for you? and then once I get those, now I can pivot into, okay, for number one and number three, I've talked to a couple other companies that were looking to do something similar. Would it be okay if I just shared some of the things I've learned from them? And now instead of simply asking, you're offering value back in return.

14:30in your deals that you don't even know exist, like the VP of Finance, who's viewed your champion's recap twice this week, but no one actually introduced you. That is the type of person who's beacon around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line, and Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Full & Rich, which compiles 20-plus premium data vendors in one place to dramatically improve your call connect rate. When you're cold calling, you have to make sure you're not showing up as spam-likely on your prospect's end.

15:04And one way to do this is to stop calling bad numbers over and over again. Mark your disconnected or fax lines or wrong numbers so you know not to dial them again. Or even better, make sure your data provider only gives you verified numbers to start with. We partnered with Full & Rich on a guide of nine ways to improve your call connect rate. Get it for free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C.

15:35Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes. Just to recap what's going on here is, ultimately, we're going to try to convince them not to build in-house, and we're going to try to persuade them why they should be buying what we sell, why they should be buying our product.

16:09However, in order to give ourselves the best chance of convincing, persuading, dare I say selling, Jen, it's helpful, it's imperative that we understand their beliefs and thinking as completely as possible, because that helps us understand where there are landmines. I don't want to try to convince them against a strongly held belief, but if I identify some of their weaknesses. Some of the places where, yeah, I'm worried about this thing, and I know that's a place that we are really well-equipped to nail. I know I'm going to punch that piece really hard when I get into the selling, the pitching, the persuading side of things.

16:47Seek first to understand before trying to be understood. I want to know all of, I want to be able to see around the corners, and that's what you're doing. What you're also doing here is you are reducing all of the sales pressure that they might be worried about feeling in this scenario and you've made it safe for them to actually open up. They're used to people who are going to fight you. And so now we've reduced all that sales pressure we've seen around the corners. And then you lean in that even harder because step two, believe it or not, is not convincing them next. It's actually helping them succeed in not buying from me.

17:23Yeah. I think we sometimes forget that sales is a long game, right? I might miss this opportunity and catch the next one. So I don't want to erode trust by diving right into a defensive motion. So you're exactly right. Step two is leaning in to help them succeed. So the talk track that I use here, once I understand what they're looking to do, how far along they are, what are they worried about? What are they optimistic about? Is I'll say, you know, you're not the only CMO I'm talking to who's exploring a build versus buy use case. Are you open to hearing some things I've seen in working with those other CMOs that they did that helped make a build case of success.

18:00Your buyer sort of expects you to push back. So the fact that you're not pushing back kind of brings their defenses down. And then there's a few categories that I think are pretty universal of like things people are doing differently. So I'll share what those categories are and we'll talk through some examples. So number one would be internal resource allocation, meaning like who are they, should they be involving and when? So as an example, when I sold Challenger sales methodology, there were a ton of prospects who would buy the Challenger book. They'd love it. They'd come in, they'd be like, I want to buy Challenger.

18:34And then they'd see the price tag and they're like, nevermind. I think we'll just do a book club in house. My mistake is I was like, no, the reason that will fail is because it freaked him out, lost the credibility. So instead what I did is I'm so pumped to hear that you have that much excitement about Challenger. Totally hear you on wanting to start here, can I give you a piece of advice based on what I've seen some other companies look back and kind of regret and wish they did differently? That specific thing is they often said, we're going to have sales doing a book club with sales. And then marketing was over here doing their own thing.

19:07Product was over there doing their own thing. So the environment around the seller never changed, which meant they could read the book. They could get excited about the book, but they couldn't actually execute on the concepts of the book. So my recommendation is make sure if you're going to do that book club, you've got marketing, you've got product, you've got leadership all in that book club together. It's as simple as that. So the first category of types of ways we might teach them that they can succeed on building on their own are internal resource allocation, who they should be involving and when.

19:36If I think about an example for me selling billing software to law firms, I might say, great, awesome. Oftentimes what law firms will do when they're building this in-house is they'll actually set up a program where they'll get a billing director and a billing coordinator to be a Tiger team around just your leads e-bills that are getting sent to the insurance companies. All of your other bills put on your normal billing team, but what most firms will do when they take this in-house is they'll have a specialized group that is just doing those specialized bills. And what I'm doing again is I'm saying, hey, this is how I can help you succeed.

20:11So category one is coaching them on how they might think about placing their internal resources when they're doing this. Category two is then technology recommendations. Talk to me about this one. Yep. So if someone were to say, let's say I'm selling to an HR buyer and they're saying we're going to VibeCode an employee engagement tool. There's multiple different technologies that that person could use. This goes back to that prep where I could say, okay, great. Are you thinking about using A, B, or C to do that? Again, it just makes me sound more in the know. And then based on the pros and cons, I can kind of start teasing some of those to say, now one of the cons with this is, and it can spark a conversation where they'll either say, yeah, you know, we've been thinking about that too.

20:54The whole idea here is I'm being helpful, but I'm also kind of teasing at things I know might be problematic. And so that's just about sounding educated in the space. What are you thinking about using? But it's important to give examples instead of just asking open-ended. Yeah, sure. So if I'm selling to law firms and let's say I'm selling a time tracking system that thousands of attorneys are going to be accessing, one thing I might say, I'm getting permission to share these suggestions, but I might say something like, you know, one thing that you might want to think through is like there are going to be times typically towards the end of the month when there's a lot of load put onto your systems because all of your attorneys are going in doing their end of month time entry and billing.

21:31And so one thing you'll probably want to consider, most firms will consider, is how they're going to balance that massive strain that is put at a very, very concentrated point in the month. And that also starts to open their mind to like, oh shit, this might be a little harder than I originally thought. Next category is what you call success management. What's this one? Yeah, so anybody who gets resources internally to build something will be accountable for showing success measurement on the other side. And so let's say, for example, I am building my own AI SDR and I'm an SDR leader. I'm going to be really, really tuned into my success metrics, which are like meetings booked and reply rate and open rate and all that stuff.

22:16What I might be undervaluing is what the CRO's success measurements would be, which is I don't just want you booking a bunch of meetings. I want you booking a bunch of high quality meetings that convert downstream. And so the way that I might tease that out is I'll say, okay, great. Now I imagine because you're going to have to be garnering a bunch of resources internally that you're going to be held to a set of success metrics. How far along are you in thinking through those? And then would it be helpful to hear how some other companies set success metrics for something similar? And that again is where I'm seeking to introduce a new idea around, yes, these three are awesome to have, but I think what your CRO is probably going to want to add to that is like, what What is the stage two to stage three conversion of those opportunities that were booked by an AIS at SDR?

23:01One of the things that this is starting to do is you are signaling, showing your prospect. I, we, my company, we've thought through this problem in way more depth than you ever possibly could. Because I'll use your challenger example. It's like we've rolled this out and implemented this at hundreds of companies. And so we've seen the pitfalls. We've seen the things you need to think through. Part of why you're buying our product is not just for the product. It's for the specialized expertise in rolling this thing out and making it work. And when we can share some of these ways to make it succeed, it's starting to, which I know is going to happen later, open the door for us to be like, you know, we can just do all that for you.

23:46But before I move on, the last one is what you call peer introductions, which I'm looking to make more friends. Maybe you can help me with this, Jen. You're on your own. No, peer introductions is, I think, particularly if you sell anything in the AI space today, like there are inevitably just going to be a group of people that opt to build something on their own. And again, going back to the idea that sales is a long game, what I would do is almost keep a tally of companies that have said, no, we're going to go build. I would keep a list of that. And then when I get the next one, what I would do is I would say, you know, I was actually just talking to another CMO a couple of weeks ago who was looking to do something similar.

24:23Would it be helpful if I connect the two of you and you kind of learn together? Like you are literally walking them into someone else who is already down the path. But two things happen here. One, they again see that your goal is to be helpful to their business, not just helpful to your own. But two, when you connect those people, that person might be farther down the path and they might be like, you know what? This was a terrible freaking idea. And looking back, I wish I would have done it differently. So it's a dice roll, right? You never know what that person's going to say. But I always will net out on being helpful over being selfish in terms of trying to get to my outcome at the cost of theirs.

24:59So to recap where we are, step zero was we did all of this prep trying to get a sense of the ownership mandate or recommendation or stance towards build versus buy. Step one then was when we get hit with that we're going to build in-house or DIY is to seek first to understand before trying to be understood. We're going to ask them all sorts of questions about their beliefs, how far along they are, who else is involved, as a way to start to give us some intel. I called it seeing around the corner of where they feel strongly versus where there might be opportunities for us to find a crack in the armor.

25:39But then before I even exploit that crack, I'm going even further and I'm leaning into helping them succeed, where I'm going to share recommendations around how they might allocate internal resources, how they might think about tech-related decisions to doing this in-house, how they might measure success, or even introducing them to somebody who's done this already or has started to go down that road. Once I've done all of these things, now you talk about what I'm doing as I've built all this trust. I'm now opening the door to pitfalls on doing it on their own. And this is where I start to say, hey, this is why you might want to buy from us instead of doing this yourself.

26:42and Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Full & Rich, which compiles 20-plus premium data vendors in one place to dramatically improve your call connect rate. When you're cold calling, you have to make sure you're not showing up as spam-likely on your prospect's end, and one way to do this is to stop calling bad numbers over and over again. Mark your disconnected or fax lines or wrong numbers so you know not to dial them again, or even better, make sure your data provider only gives you verified numbers to start with.

27:15We partnered with Full & Rich on a guide of nine ways to improve your call connect rate. Get it for free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple-choice question, which sounds like typically when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you? Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, PipeDrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes.

27:47And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes. Exactly. So now that I've built all that trust and credibility, now I'll pivot to, now all that said, we have also worked with some CMOs, CXOs, who've tried building this and didn't see success or found it to be way more resource intensive than they expected, are you open to hearing some of the things we've learned there and things that they would go back and do differently if they could do it all over again? Now, what I will say is the single biggest advantage to selling in a market with as much uncertainty and a change as we are right now because of AI is that there's been no better time for executives to look up left and to the right and be like, what are you doing?

28:31What are you doing? Is it working? Is it not? What should I be doing? And so I have yet to ask this question and have someone say, no, I'm uninterested in what everybody else is doing. So I think there's a real urgency and timeliness to this. So now what I'm doing is, again, I think there's a few broad categories that most solutions would fall into. So the number one, it's actually the same number one as the last one, which is resource allocation. So last time I was being helpful to say, hey, you might want to bring this person in. And I know at face value, they probably wouldn't seem like they'd fit, but here's why.

29:04Now I'm doing downsides of resource allocation. This is usually the big one where it might be something that's fast to build, but expensive and costly to maintain. So this is where I'm going back to the prep and I'm grabbing some statistics, some universal talk tracks. So I can, again, say, not say it's going to take you this amount of money to maintain it or this many people to maintain it. And instead, what I can say is now for this other company that did it, what they spoke about is it was really quick to build. But on average, it was taking 15 ,000 of salary time every single month, which meant at the end, they actually weren't saving money.

29:41And the customizations were so high maintenance to keep up that the team wasn't able to stay on top of it. So the very reason that they went to build in the first place actually kind of fell apart three months in. And what you're doing is, again, telling the story through another person. So you're not saying you're going to fail. It's just here's another experience. Yeah, I would go. Most of the law firms that I talk to who roll out e-billing program in-house, they end up having to have a dedicated biller who is focused on the bills that you are sending via this L-E-D-E-S e-bill format. And so it ends up kind of being a wash where you basically have an entire head count and full FTE focused just on e-billing.

30:25And so for a lot of firms, they actually realize it might be less expensive to be able to just use a specialized billing software. But I don't want to push you too hard, customer, is what I might say. Yeah, yeah. But that's just, you know, I'm just the messenger here. Thumbs up. I do what I can. So that's the first one, which is resource allocation. The next one is employee confidence, which I'm looking for a little bit more in my role. So this is another one where I think, especially with AI builds, people get really excited about the possibility. But one thing when any executive has gone through a change management or a transformation that they will recognize is that if you roll something out and employees have a bad experience with it, or it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, it is really difficult to get a second swing at your employees' confidence and trust.

31:15And so this was a really common one for me where I'd say, sure, you absolutely can go out there and you can build this stuff on your own. But one client that I worked with said the first time they went around it, this negative thing happened. And so when they fixed it and they went back to the drawing board, there was way less excitement and belief in trying it. So where they ended up struggling was with adoption. And so they had a ton of internal resources that were dragging and pulling and trying to get people to use it, which again, kept people off from doing the other projects that were arguably more important and more and needed more of their time.

31:51Okay. Yeah. Illuminating again, we would sometimes have firms who really are, we're going to build this in house. We can do this. What I would say is like, once I go through all of your other steps, it's like, you know, when you're rolling something out to your attorneys, getting them to change their behavior is really, really hard. And so typically you usually only have one shot to get them to change their approach before they say, nope, I'm going to keep doing this with a pen and paper, which law firms are still doing. And so I'm almost raising the stakes of the rollout, which would make them want to go with a trusted proven option as opposed to trying to do it on their own.

32:27I'm already feeling more confident. What's the next one? What's the next category? The last category is illuminating that there's often far more buy-in required from different departments within the business, then maybe the vibe coding narrative makes it seem. So for a lot of these cases, it's either touching employee data, customer data, which means you're going to need to have privacy and compliance and all of these other folks internally weigh in on this, which means, and that's a good thing, but it means what might seem very quick to build and easy to build can extend into this really long time frame.

33:11And so what I'm looking to do there is to say, you know, one of the other CMOs I worked with was really excited about this use case. What they didn't appreciate up front was how many people in the business wanted to dip their fingers in it and find reasons why it shouldn't work or it needed more security. And so it was eight months later, they still didn't have it rolled out, whereas the need was much sooner. And so what you're trying to do there is show that there's unexpected hurdles inside of the organization that might make it difficult to get rollout to happen as fast as they think it could.

33:43All of these approaches make them start to realize that this is a bigger, badder, gnarlier project to take on on their own. And now we can tell them why we're great, right? Yes. Now it's a very natural pivot to say, now that we've talked through some of those pitfalls, are you open to hearing how using our solution might mitigate some of those challenges? And And then I literally go back through that exact hit list. So like with resource allocation, instead of, and I think instead of is the key thing because you want to do the callback, instead of having a person that is full time just maintaining the system, that person can remain on their core job to be done of doing X because our team will be picking up that slack.

34:25And so when you do the compare contrast instead of motion, it's allowing them to envision like future state ugly, future state lovely, and draw that themselves. Because like I say a lot, like I genuinely don't believe that we salespeople convince prospects of anything. I think you simply can give them information and they convince themselves. But that before after picture, I think is really important for them to see. I recapped pretty recently. So I'm going to do a quick one, which is step zero. Know the stance of their ownership before you get on the call around build versus buy. Step one, when you get hit with the objection, seek first to understand before trying to be understood.

35:02This lets their sales pressure, their feeling go down and lets you understand all of the pitfalls so that you can eventually convince, but you're not going to convince yet. You're going to build some trust by giving them a bunch of different suggestions that help them succeed. We talked about internal resource allocation, tech recommendation, success measurement, peer introductions. From there, once you've built some trust, then you can open the door to the pitfalls, whether that is, again, resource allocation that it might not be thinking through, employee confidence in the rollout of the solution and how the stakes are probably higher than they are realizing, and then unexpected buy-in.

35:37Hey, you might think this is just your department, but you actually need to think through all these other departments who might also need to be involved. The goal of this is you get them saying, oh god, this project's going to be a bear to take on, and then you can say using the instead of, the compare contrast all the ways that you solve those pitfalls for them so that this is done for you and if you do this you might close some more deals look at that well Jen thank you for joining us folks and if you're sitting here and being like man I wish somebody would give me a step-by-step breakdown of how I could roll this out with my team did you know that Jen sat down for weeks, for hours with the team at 30MPC, and we built an entire executive selling and multi-threading course to help you navigate through situations just like the one that we talked about today.

36:29There is a link in the episode notes of this episode. If you would like to grab it, we might even put a little discount code there for you. And you can even get a little free preview of it before you decide to buy. So you can decide, do you want to take this in-house or do you want to have it done for you? But seriously, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week on the show.

37:18That is the type of person who's beacon around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line. And Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multi-thread to them. We built a full multi-threading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Full & Rich, which compiles 20-plus premium data vendors in one place to dramatically improve your call connect rate. When you're cold calling, you have to make sure you're not showing up as spam-likely on your prospect's end. And one way to do this is to stop calling bad numbers over and over again.

37:47Mark your disconnected or fax lines or wrong numbers so you know not to dial them again. Or even better, make sure your data provider only gives you verified numbers to start with. We partnered with Full & Rich on a guide of nine ways to improve your call connect rate. Get it for free in the show notes. Today's show is brought to you by Pipedrive's easy-to-use and customizable CRM with built-in meeting intelligence. My favorite discovery question is the multiple-choice question, which sounds like, typically, when I'm talking with folks like you, they're focused on A, B, or C. Which is it for you?

38:15Now, A, B, and C have to be problems that you can solve, because that's how you steer the conversation in the direction of places you can help them. Now, Pipedrive's built-in meeting intelligence helps you focus on your follow-up question, not on scrambling to take live notes. And we built a full discovery toolkit with them free in the 30MPC closers hub. There's a link in the show notes.